A North Charleston woman who claimed to be the mother of a female Air Force officer killed in Iraq conceded Tuesday the officer doesn't exist.

Melanie Grant, 39, said she thought she could buy time with creditors if she told them her daughter had died. A paid obituary published Thursday and Friday in The Post and Courier stated Lt. Melissa Hope Grant, 24, died May 11 in Iraq.

"I just made it up. Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking," a tearful Melanie Grant said.

A photograph accompanied the obituary. Grant said she tore the photo from the pages of a bridal magazine.